Kick-off hearings in the Trump impeachment inquiry start at 9 a.m. CST Wednesday, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a memo Tuesday said he will not be dealing with GOP-fueled conspiracy theories and will not reveal the name of the whistleblower.
Schiff said this in a memo to committee members outlining the rules of engagement for the hearings and setting his own ground rules for what the hearings will be — and what they will not be.
“It is important to underscore that the House’s impeachment inquiry, and the Committee, will not serve as venues for any Member to further the same sham investigations into the Bidens or into debunked conspiracies about 2016 U.S. election interference that President Trump pressed Ukraine to undertake for his personal political benefit,” Schiff.
The document also includes a section defining “Whistleblower Protection and Confidentiality” that speaks to the committee’s “long, proud, and bipartisan history of protecting whistleblowers — including from efforts to threaten, intimidate, retaliate against, or undermine the confidentiality of whistleblowers.”
House Republicans on Tuesday released an 18-page memo to their members concluding, “Democrats want to impeach President Trump because unelected and anonymous bureaucrats disagreed with the President’s decisions and were discomforted by his telephone conversation with (Ukraine) President Zelensky.”
Read both memoranda below.
Schiff’s memo to committee members:
Republican members memo:
